What are Source mods in a "post-mod" age, where they're not even modding a retail game anymore, and they're freely distributed and shared? Can we even still call these things "mods", or have they transcended that type of framing?

In order to play a mission called "Last Survivor" in the upcoming hopefully-this-one-won't-suck Alien game, Alien: Isolation -- one that features the original Nostromo crew with voice acting by Sigourney Weaver as Ripley, Tom Skerritt as Dallas, Veronica Cartwright as Lambert, and more, several of whom will be playable characters -- you'll have to preorder the game specifically from Gamestop. I'm going call it now: I estimate that this simple decision will double or triple the number of copies of this game that are pirated, which will result in significantly lower sales, which means that even if it's good, it will be labelled a flop. Good thinking, Sega!

The indie designer has become a romantic fixation for videogame culture in recent years, something that’s given an industry calcifying around expensive sequels a sense of creative momentum and social purpose it wouldn’t otherwise have had.

Hurry The Sorry Word is a short, haunting 'experience' created by Nate Gallardo and featuring the blues song Death Don't Have No Mercy, recorded by Blind Gary Davis and originally released on the album Harlem Street Singer in 1960. [Download for win/mac/linux]

"We need the diversity question to keep getting asked, and we need to be listening for complicated answers." A long and well-reasoned roundup of some of the recent discussion around diversity as represented in games themselves.

Steve continues, "The other thing that was really innovative in Maniac Mansion was the fact that you were controlling three different characters and switching back and forth, which was something I'd never seen before."

I played NetHack yesterday, I played it today, I’ll play it tomorrow. There’s a better than even chance I’m playing it as you’re reading this. I do this despite having basically exhausted the challenge of the game.

"Games about space fascists kicking the shit out of each other just aren't having as much on an impact on contemporary discourse as they could." David Hayward (organizer of the Feral Vector game design festival) walks and talks amusingly about how thinking of video games as industry stifles video games as a creative culture. His accompanying blog post is here.

DAGGR is a new community for LGBT gamers and their friends. Their mission is "to build a thriving community platform for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender gamers (or 'gaymers') and their friends, to share their gaming experiences and connect with each other through the medium of video games."

Vlambeer (developer of LUFTRAUSER and other games) has created a number of tools, and talks that can help with developing, marketing and releasing games. They also extensively use a number of external services to create, market and release our games, and so they decided to bundle all this information into a single website for your convenience.

In Ulitsa Dimitrova, you are "Pyotr, a seven year old homeless boy who lives in St. Petersburg, who's a chain smoker and has to beg to get cigarettes all the time. And if you stop playing, things come even worse..." If you'd rather watch than play, you can do that, too.

Fans of the pixel-art fencing game Nidhogg have created a five-minute short film starring live actors in brightly-colored bodysuits (via Kotaku which also links to some previous Nidhogg fun). [more inside]

ship.shapewright creates a random spaceship for you (or one based on a name you select) and lets you download it in VRML format or have it 3D printed and mailed to you. Behold! The USS wonderchicken, the USS gamefilter, and, of course, the USS buttslol.

What Is Gamefilter?

Gamefilter is a community weblog based in spirit and intent on the great work of Matt Haughey and his staff at Metafilter. It's all about sharing links to interesting stuff on the web, but with a narrower focus on gaming-related links -- good stuff that other people might not have already seen -- and talking about them.

Anyone can join for the low low price of zero dollars, and once you're a member, you have the senses-shattering power to post new stuff right from the front end of the site, and talk about that stuff in the comment threads. You don't need an account to read GFi, but as well as giving you The Power To Post, membership also lets you

Your genial host is stavrosthewonderchicken, the miraculous poultry who built and administers the MFC Network sites, and a bunch of other web stuff as well. He has a minor addiction to building websites. He loves you all.